Yorkshire

Our first camping trip of the year was three nights at Wood Nook campsite in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, a few miles from Skipton. We arrived on Friday evening with our trailer tent in tow, excited to kick-start our camping season – our first as a family of four. The approach to the campsite through Threshfields and Skirethorns is down a winding single track road with few passing places which could be tricky in a large motorhome, but is very picturesque and set our expectations high for the campsite.

Our trip to Holme Valley Camping was a bit of a last minute unplanned getaway – but isn’t that the beauty of owning a campervan? We loaded up the van and set off on Friday night after work. The drive was only about 50 minutes, even at campervan pace. Although we arrived fairly late on Friday evening (8pm), the site was very accommodating about late check-ins – in fact, there were 3 other campers checking in when we arrived. Due to our late booking we weren’t able to secure a pitch with electric hookup, but the non electric prices are incredibly good value (£14 for a campervan pitch, with awning and up to two people, at the time of writing this review).

This was another 2-night weekend camping trip that we booked just a few days before. The site, close to Penistone is around an hour away from home so was close enough that we could pack the van and head off after a full day’s work and still arrive in time to setup camp before dark. This site is small. Really small. We drove straight past it (twice) when we first arrived. The only giveaway is an Orchard Camping banner tied to the wall next to the gate, but that was obscured by a camper’s car when we arrived.

Campsites are few and far between around the lovely town of Hebden Bridge. It’s a short 45 minute drive from home but we’d tried and failed to go camping here once before. We’d decided to just turn up with a couple of campsites in mind and felt sure we’d manage to find somewhere. Unfortunately one site had closed for refurbishment and the other was closed for a private booking and despite lots of searching and driving we didn’t manage to find anywhere. So this time we’d booked in advance at the Hebden Bridge Camping site.

For this camping trip we had some family visiting from Australia and wanted to show them some of our favourite places in the Yorkshire Dales. We settled on Woodend Campsite which is located on a working farm of the same name just past the village of Austwick.

We took a last-minute trip to Dent to meet up with a group of friends who were visiting from “down south” and renting a local cottage for the week so we made the trip over in the ‘van and booked a pitch for a couple of nights at High Laning. The route that we took (coming in from Skipton) took us up over and through the hills on a winding road through farmland in which we had to stop several times to open gates, drive through and the close the gates shut behind us! It’s quite a large campsite, being split across both sides of the main road out of Dent.

I had been wanting to stay at the Gordale Scar campsite since seeing it featured on Martin Dorey‘s BBC2 series “One Man and His Campervan” a couple of years ago and this summer I finally got around to organising a trip. Let’s be very clear about the main attraction of this site: Location, location, location! Facilities are basic – easily the most basic of any site we’ve reviewed so far: no electric hookups, no hard standing pitches, no on-site shop (in fact no shop for several miles). All of that is easily forgiven though because the location is fantastic. (more…)

Grouse Hill campsite is hidden at the end of a long drive that’s accessed from behind The Flask pub on the A171. We approached from Scarborough and didn’t see any signs for the campsite, although if you miss it (or if you’re approaching from Whitby) there’ another entrance road that is signed.